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I've been programming a prototype for an online game lately and I've been fretting about sending too much data, but I've never really been sure of how much is 'safe' to send regularly.

I've read from an old post in this forum that a general guideline for how much data to include in a packet is 1300 bytes, but how do I know how much I can send per second to my clients to remain safe? Of course, it depends on the client's Internet speed, but what guidelines can I go by to determine how much data I can afford to send per second? How do online game programmers usually go about this?

A lot of the text, from the buttons on the header to the titles of articles, doesn't show up on the homepage for me. I tried hitting Ctrl + F5 which I believe is the 'hard refresh', but it didn't fix the issue.

After mousing over something, its text will begin showing, even if I mouse off of it afterwards.

This bug happens on Google Chrome, which I use primarily, but it doesn't happen on Mozilla Firefox. I'm running Google Chrome version 33.0.1750.154.

Here's a screenshot of how the homepage looks for me (my mouse is placed on the Forums button, but it doesn't show in the screenshot):

I'm using Unity and about to get into testing out the level design for the 3D game I'm making. I've got some test textures that I made (poorly) and I'm confused on how to get them to show up the same way regardless of the mesh they're placed on.

I already sought help on the matter by asking on the Unity Answers website some time ago. I explained the dilemma there and I put an image up to help demonstrate it. Here's a link there. Just so you know, the answer below my question there isn't really relevant to this thread.

I kind of fixed the issue with the help of the community and some of my own hacky coding.

What I did was code up a way to make a new material (which, in Unity, is a texture, kind of) and set its tiling based on the distance the material has to be 'stretched across'. If the mesh is 25 units wide and 8 units tall, then it sets the X tiling to 25 and the Y tiling to 8. Since the goal was to try and make a way to tile a texture by game units instead of "how many times it's placed on the mesh", I added a variable called 'gameUnitsPerTile' and set the X and Y tiling to X distance / gameUnitsPerTile and Y distance / gameUnitsPerTile, respectively.

The thought was, the material tiles across the whole mesh X/Y tiling times. So if the tiling is 4x4, then it draws the image 4 times along the X axis and 4 times along the Y axis. If the tiling values were set to the actual 'length' of the mesh, then it'd be tiling it once across the whole mesh. That way, as long as your gameUnitsPerTile value was the same for each mesh, you could have the texture showing the same way on each mesh.

It actually worked pretty well, but I still feel like I'm doing it wrong, and I'm not totally confident my method is very optimized (having a different material for each wall) or will work in every situation I'll need it to. I'm probably just severely mixed up about how UVs and texture tiling works. I feel like this is a lot harder than it should be.

Anyway, thanks for reading this far, and I hope it makes sense. If I've failed to explain something properly, please tell me what it is and I'll try to fix it. Any help would be appreciated.

2. All of us, working together, are better game designers than any of us working alone.

3. The more game ideas we all share, the better game designers we all become.

There’s already evidence to suggest that rapidly iterating on multiple designs in an open, collaborative environment leads to better designs and better designers. GameSprout puts theory into practice to help all of us create awesome games while becoming the best game designers we can be!

I'm not really sure I agree with these points...

Aren't people on GameDev always saying that a good game designer is much more valuable than a bunch of 'idea guys'? That a lot of people who think they're good at game design actually aren't? That just playing a lot of games doesn't specifically mean you're good at game design?

However, if a lot of actual game designers, who've done more than just played games, are on the site (not just the 'idea guys'), then perhaps it could be a good way to prototype games?

This thread is here to provide new users with information that they commonly come here seeking. The goal is to get you to the resources that will answer your questions quickly, without you having to post and wait for replies. Also, we often get the same questions asked by many different users many times; it'll be more convenient if they're all answered in one place.

If you're completely new to GameDev.net and haven't been lurking around for a while, then reading these resources will help to answer all kinds of questions you may have in the future.

If you came to the forums because you have an idea for a game, then this resource is for you. It clears away many misconceptions you may be holding about game development, and puts you on the right path to getting your game made.

If you're here because you have a general curiosity for how games are made, what they're made of, and/or how to start making them (or parts of them) yourself, then this resource is for you. It's a broad description of game development and its individual aspects. It also has resources for learning more about specific fields of game development.

Note: This resource is rather unfinished at the moment and could use some help from the community; but it can still serve as a good starting point for now.